Battle Hymn Of The Tiger Mom By Amy Tan Literary Techniques

Diagnostic Writing Mother-daughter relationships are filled with love, care, and support. They might be testing at times, but in the end they possess a stronger bond. The excerpt from Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom by Amy Chua portrays these qualities in a tough-love manner. However, the excerpt from The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan provides the opposite atmosphere due to the lack of these characteristics. Amy Chua uses a tense tone throughout the excerpt while Amy Tan presents a hostile resentful tone in her excerpt.
In the excerpt, “The Violin”, Chua values the success of her daughter, Lulu, and wants her to be the best violin player she can be. However, the tense tone contradicts Chua’s intentions.She screams at Lulu, “RELAX! Mr. Shugart said RAG DOLL” (Chua 47-48). Amy Chua means to set a relaxed environment for her daughter’s violin practice, but ironically does the opposite, making Lulu annoyed and uncomfortable.

The mother-daughter relationship in this novel is unlike the previous one written by Amy Chua. It is evident this relationship is fragile and unhealthy. Amy Tan’s mother forces Amy to practice piano by dragging her from the couch to the piano and yelling. Amy tan, the daughter in the novel, states, “Her mouth was open, smiling crazily as if she were pleased that I was crying”(Tan 141-142). The daughter is frightened by her mother’s harsh mental and physical abuse. She wants to make her mother feel the same way, so she reacts grimly.Without thinking, she shouts, “Then I wish I'd never been born..I wish I were dead, Like them”(141-142). As if on command, the mother leaves the room with a stunned expression covering her normally angry face. These events determine the resentful strict tone throughout the passage. This mother-daughter relationship depicts the exact opposite of a loving and caring